Jean Toomer Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Jean Toomer

When the writers of the early Harlem Renaissance read Cane in 1923, in the words of Arna Bontemps, they "went quietly mad." No prior literary description of the Afro-American experience had reached its level of artistic achievement. Jean Toomer, the author of Cane, had been mostly associated with progressive white writers of the late 1910s and early 1920s, such as Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, but the black avant garde writers claimed him as their own. Cane was called the herald of a new day in Afro-American letters, and Toomer was perceived as the most promising Negro writer. It was an auspicious beginning for a new author. Although Toomer continued writing for his whole life, the promise of his masterpiece was not matched again in his published work. By the end of the 1920s Toomer and Cane seemed to have disappeared from the world of letters; they remained largely...